Matthew Harris

"Take up the white man's burden and send forth the best ye breed", wrote Rudyard Kipling in 1899 when the British Empire was the world's greatest power. Now, in a very different age, the Commonwealth contains many of the countries that once were British colonies, a free association of nations...

Okay, so it's always easy to be cynical about signs of life in the Israeli/Palestinian peace process. Experience teaches one to be cautiously pessimistic about the chances of achieving anything any time soon. But (and it is a big but), I can't help feeling encouraged by the moderate success -...

The Tory MP Andrew Tyrie is in the news for suggesting that the Government does not have a "coherent and credible" plan for long-term economic growth. He knows far more about economics than I do, so I shall not debate the details of what he is saying, although...

Nick Clegg's speech on the Arab Spring goes further than calling for a democratic outcome across the region. It makes achieving such an outcome a defining aim of UK foreign policy, building on Clegg's previous commitment to "the principle of liberal interventionism...the principle that we have...

Imagine for a moment that you are a sixteen-year-old white boy called Steve. You live in one of the poorest parts of east London; neither of your parents has ever worked and you are eligible for free school meals. You attend a local comprehensive school and are doing very well...

In his Paris speech on European policy on Friday 8 July, Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg is advancing an economically liberal argument of which the Coalition Government can be proud. That Clegg can make such a speech is a triumph for the Liberal Democrats. That David Cameron would surely never...

Liberal Democrats' role in the Coalition Government offers the party a chance to re-define its foreign policy thinking, much as the Orange Book re-defined aspects of its economic thinking. The Orange Book is often seen as a rightward shift, so in what direction is Lib Dem foreign policy...